Regrets? I've Had a Few...

Autumn for many marks the gradual winding down of another year. Leaves turning on the trees and memories of summer holidays fading faster than your tan, with the next stop Christmas. 

And yet for me since 2013, October has marked the beginning of a whole new direction for my life when I celebrate each successive birthday since the launch of Look Fabulous Forever.

The day of the launch party on October 11th is etched on my memory. Looking back it’s a miracle that everything came together in the way it did. Our e-commerce website went live that very day, with almost no testing, as did the two videos that we had uploaded to YouTube, and Alan, MD of Creative Cosmetics arrived at our evening party at the Icetank Studios in London with a suitcase of finished products - the first time I’d actually seen them! However, despite that sense of ‘by the skin of your teeth’, the party was a great success and from Day One the business was blessed with a great deal of positivity and good will.

Eleven years on and I am older, wiser and considerably less innocent than I was then. There are some regrets which I will share with you, but  if you were to ask me this weekend “given the chance, would you do it all again?” I would say “yes, of course I would, although I’m quite glad that I was so blithely naive at the start about some of the inevitable challenges that I faced.” 

Regrets? I’ve had a few but, then again…..

1- No Regrets about Taking on the Beauty Industry. 

Eleven years ago, the only way that the beauty industry could talk about age was to negate it via a neat little phrase which they liberally slapped onto all skincare products. ‘Anti-age’ was meant to convey a kind of moral failure on behalf of any right-thinking older woman to do everything she could to stop ‘the seven (why seven?) visible signs of ageing’. The dishonesty was both breath-taking and infuriating. If I have shifted the dial to a more positive conversation about older faces, then I have no regrets about that.

2- No Regrets about Unapologetically Speaking to Older Women. 

In the early days I came under considerable pressure to tone down the mention of age in relation to LFF. I was told that ‘older women don’t want to see themselves labelled in that way - it will taint your brand.’ The belief was that I should be coy about naming our target customer as ‘postmenopausal’ or ‘older’ and also ‘massage’ the appeal to make it much wider in order to include women in their 40s and early 50s. I resisted this with every fibre of my being. At 65, I had a very different face from a 40 year old (my daughter’s age), and even a 50 year old. I needed different makeup, different formulations and that is what I wanted to create, promote and sell. My solutions to enhancing an older face were via definition and colour, not via empty promises of eradicating the appearance of age.

3- No Regrets about Framing the Conversation around What Age Means.

When I started Look Fabulous Forever there wasn’t very much interest in what older women might need or want to enhance their lives. Lip service was paid to the fact that our generation is living longer than ever before, but this was mainly couched in negative terms such as ‘the demographic time bomb of old age’, implying that all of us old folk would detonate at some point and destroy the very fabric of society. But I knew that we were ageing very differently from our parents. We were busy, active, engaged, healthier and (relatively) better off thanks to final salary pension schemes and state protection of pensioner incomes. I was often invited onto discussion panels where I could bang the drum for us all by being a person who was challenging ageist assumptions by starting a business at 65 and who still wanted to look and feel fabulous.

4- No Regrets about Putting Our Customers First.

One of the benefits of being a much older entrepreneur is that you have a lot of prior experience to draw on. Years ago, I taught client relationship skills to people working for a large accountancy company. We used to do a fun exercise in which they’d dream up all the ways they might lose their clients in person, on the telephone and in writing. At the end, some bright spark would often say “we actually do lots of those things now!” Point made and taken. It taught me very powerfully that without customers a business is nothing, so, from the very first day I asked the same question we are still asking ‘how can we show our customers how much we value them?’ Hopefully, if you are an LFF customer reading this, you have been able to feel the love.

5- No Regrets about Using Real Older Women as Models.

A story. A while ago I picked up one of those ubiquitous booklets from fashion companies trying to tempt me to buy their clothes. It was from Pure Cashmere and as ever, there was a model on the front who looked well under 40, despite the fact that their clientele was most likely to be women like me. There was another booklet on the doormat which initially heartened me because the cover photograph was of a woman much nearer to my age, who was also wearing a very nice cashmere jumper. Then I realised this was advertising Pure Cremations! Encouraged to imagine my own death, not encouraged to celebrate my life by wearing nice clothes. That’s why I have always insisted on showing our makeup on faces that are real, in the sense both of not being full of Botox and fillers, and also being the same age as our customers. Authenticity matters. So does honesty.

6- No Regrets about Our Products and Buying the Factory.

Back in 2013, I started with just 12 makeup products and 7 brushes. Five items for the face, four for the eyes and three for the lips. Today the range has stretched to 54 in total and I’m still inordinately proud of every single product that we sell, whether that’s makeup, skincare or haircare. I continue to be the main tester for everything we are planning to introduce and if I don’t love it, then it doesn’t make it into production. At 76, I believe that my skin, face and hair are all testament to the amazing quality of everything that we produce, most of it at Creative Cosmetics, the original factory from 2013 which LFF now owns in Ipswich.

7- No Regrets about the Ways LFF has Enhanced My Life.

Throughout 2012 I had been needed to support my younger daughter’s family as they struggled to cope with a very sick mentally and physically challenged baby. As India’s condition improved she was eventually able to come home from hospital with a comprehensive care package, supplemented by an excellent special needs nanny. My daughter and son-in-law resumed their busy lives but, aged 65, I felt I had no meaningful life to go back to. I felt completely lost. I have described it as an existential crisis which I think may be quite common for many women as they hit retirement age. I kept thinking ‘what’s the point of me?’ and What do I do with the next 30 years of my life? My solution was to take the leap of faith of starting LFF to help older women to feel better about their ageing selves. And, somewhat gratifyingly it has also immeasurably enhanced my own life.

And what of the regrets? Just one or two, which include the failure to be heard more loudly and clearly in what has proved to be a very noisy space. If I had been more famous, had a higher profile or been more widely known, life would have been a lot easier when I started Look Fabulous Forever. But the advantage has been that I arrived with no prior baggage or skeletons to either hide or defend and very gradually I have been able to establish a reputation as someone who (hopefully) has something interesting to say about the lives and looks of older women.

I also feel that I’m a long way from winning the argument about older women and makeup. I still see lots of women my age who aren't wearing a scrap of makeup and think “how do I help you to see how much better you could look with just a tiny touch of lippie?” I suspect that the solution is via evolution rather than revolution, so I need to keep plugging away and to keep speaking up wherever and whenever I can to say “You, too, deserve to look and feel fabulous, and you can if you just make a tiny bit of extra effort - so why not watch this video?!”

I may not be quite where I hoped to be with LFF after eleven years, but I’m not that far off either. Along the way, I’ve met some amazing people, had some unforgettable experiences including going to Los Angeles for the Oscars, and I’ve had the incredible fun and pleasure of working with my two daughters and a team of exceptional people. 

However, the best part has been the wonderful response of all of you as followers and customers of our business. Without your support and engagement Look Fabulous Forever would not have grown and thrived for eleven years. 

So a heartfelt thank you to all of you and please join me to wish Look Fabulous Forever a Very Happy Birthday!

Tricia x

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